Investigating environmental justice in Glasgow: 1899-2003. A GIS and statistical analysis of air quality and social deprivation in Glasgow

Environmental justice research is concerned with the implementation of fair systems to create and maintain an equal distribution of environmental protection and risk; procedural environmental justice is specifically concerned with how these systems work and have worked historically. There is a distinct lack of research into procedural environmental justice in the UK, particularly in Scotland. This dissertation engages with these concepts and explores the existence of an environmental injustice in Glasgow, Scotland with regards to poor air quality and social deprivation, at three key time points over the 20th century. Glasgow is well known for its poor health and wide inequalities in standard of living, and has led to the phrase ‘the Glasgow Effect’. Using multiple archival, GIS, and statistical methods, this dissertation demonstrates that whilst there is no evidence for a distributional environmental injustice in Glasgow, there is strong evidence for a procedural injustice. This has important policy and academic implications and may inform future approaches to inequalities and injustices in Glasgow.